The continued use of the word “Liberation” (Oslobođenje) for what occurred in Zagreb eighty years ago, when Partisan forces took control of the city, is intellectually indefensible. Croatia and Yugoslavia, like most of the rest of Eastern Europe, passed in the period immediately after the Second World War from control by one totalitarian ideology, some version of fascism or National Socialism, to control by another, Communism. Given that approaching 100 million people world-wide are estimated to have lost their lives because of Communism, the idea that it liberated Croats is to say the least improbable.
The Soviet model applied to the Yugoslav system
Only the historically ignorant and counter-factual assessment that Tito was “different” and Yugoslavia “liberal” allows this nonsense to gain any credibility. The truth is that the system applied by the Yugoslav Communists was modelled on that practised by Stalin in the Soviet Union. The expulsion of Yugoslavia from Cominform in 1948 did not mean a break with the main features of that system, whose ideology and repressive system were retained. Self-management (samoupravljanje) was not intended to slow the path to socialism, to the contrary. Only later, after the fall of Aleksandar Ranković in 1966, and with increased economic contact with the West, did life under Communism become less brutal and controlled.
The nonsense about Liberation in 1945 is, however, dangerous. The misuse of fundamental philosophical and political concepts always brings with it dangers. In this case, the intentional or just sloppy misuse of the term “Liberation” has the effect of legitimising Yugoslav Communism as a system and suggesting that those who, from whatever standpoint, opposed it were – and still are – on “the wrong side of history”, and thus do not deserve a hearing or respect.
1945 in Zagreb: the distorted truth
Characteristically, the report in Vjesnik, of the reception given to the Partisans on 8 May 1945 significantly distorts the truth:
“Units of the glorious, victorious Yugoslav Army entered liberated Zagreb…The more than a hundred thousand citizens of Zagreb – men, women and young people – gathered at that mass meeting are yet another proof that Zagreb belongs to Tito.”
In fact, as the now well-known photograph of Partisan units marching in single file across an otherwise empty Ban Jelačić Square proves, there was no spontaneous public enthusiasm – unlike that displayed (and captured photographically) when German troops entered Zagreb in April 1941. A concentrated effort by the Party leadership was required to mobilise the population for the first demonstrations of enthusiasm, culminating with that mass meeting in Jelačić Square on 13 May.
The Exodus fuelled by fear of Partisan revenge
By contrast, although the NDH authorities certainly did seek to encourage it, to promote their importance with the Allies, the exodus of thousands of men, women and children, Ustaše, Domobrani and civilians, not just from Zagreb but from elsewhere in Croatia, on 6 and 7 May was for the most part spontaneous. The common factor was fear of Partisan revenge alongside a misguided hope that the West – especially the British – would offer refuge. Archbishop Stepinac later recalled the scenes:
“I saw those poor people, advancing out of Bosnia, Srijem, Slavonia, in long columns. An old horse pitifully pulling a cart; women and children on carts…Cows tied behind the carts, and such sights. Where was that poor crowd off to! They would kill them, those that did not die on the way…”
These people rightly assessed that the future for them and their families did not involve Liberation.
Of course, a limited people were, indeed, liberated, namely those held in NDH prisons and camps. The Zagreb Jews were not mainly among them, having been dispatched to Auschwitz for liquidation on Himmler’s instructions in 1943. Only those married to gentiles (Christians) had been spared, because of Stepinac’s and the Church’s interventions.
What happened to the national minorities?
The other sense of the word Liberation – and the Party deliberately now and later confused the two to burnish its patriotic credentials – was the removal of control by the Axis “Occupiers” of significant stretches of Croatian territory. Croatia within Socialist Yugoslavia expanded in Istria and obtained Rijeka, Zadar, some of the islands, Baranja and Međimurje. Of course, what happened to the national minorities in those areas – Italians, Hungarians and Germans hardly amounted to Liberation, but rather expulsion, imprisonment, persecution and often death.
The entry of the Partisans into Zagreb on 8 May had been meticulously prepared, as a range of publicly available documents demonstrate. From the foundation of the OZNA (Odjeljenje za zaštitu naroda – Department for the Protection of the People) secret police in May 1944, the Party – and all OZNA members had to be Party members – had fashioned a powerful weapon to enforce revolution and repression. With Ranković in overall charge and Ivan Krajačić Stevo as head of the Croatian OZNA, the organisation had well before 8 May 1945 drawn up a detailed model of how to gather and deploy information about the Party’s enemies and then to isolate, suppress and eliminate them.
Mass graves in Slovenia and Croatia
The detailed plan prepared for taking Varaždin drawn up at the end of March 1945 undoubtedly had its equivalent (now lost) for Zagreb. It listed all the important buildings and institutions to be secured and, most important, those who were to be arrested. In Zagreb, any remaining leading HSS figures were ordered to be seized as a priority.
The full account of how many were killed in these early days will have to await the completion of the work initiated by the Commission for the Determination of War-time and Post-War Victims (Komisija za utvrđivanje ratnih i poratnih žrtava) whose politically motivated closure is one of the many scandals associated with the suppression of the truth about Partisan crimes. Enough is known, however, about the contents of mass graves in Slovenia (Tezno, Huda Jama and elsewhere) and some in Croatia (Jazovka in Žumberak) to show what was done.
The prisons and camps in and around Zagreb – Kanal, Jankomir, Prečko, Maksimir, Sesvete – temporarily held “enemies of the people”, who were taken out of them for (at best) summary trial and execution and burial or moved on along the Križni put (“Way of the Cross”).
The proceedings in Zagreb were initially not harsh enough for Ranković, who on 15 May addressed a severe rebuke to Krajačić:
“Your work in Zagreb is unsatisfactory. In ten days in liberated Zagreb only 200 bandits were shot. We are astonished at this indecisiveness in purging Zagreb of villains”.
In the days that followed, the industrial scale of killing should have started to satisfy him.
Party leadership had no intention of honouring their promises
The Partisans had made a series of promises before they gained power which foretold the birth of freedom – a genuine Liberation. These were, of course, flagrant lies that no one in the Party leadership, at any rate, had any intention of honouring, and which were primarily directed at the Allies. At its Third Meeting, at Topusko on 9 May 1944, ZAVNOH (Zemaljsko antifašističko vijeće narodnog oslobođenja Hrvatske – Country Antifascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia) issued a “Declaration on the Fundamental Rights of the People and Citizens of Democratic Croatia” (Deklaracija o osnovnim pravima naroda i građana Demokratske Hrvatske). Among its pledges were:
“To every citizen is guaranteed the security of the person and property. The right of ownership and private initiative in economic life are guaranteed…
“To all citizens are guaranteed freedom of religion and freedom of conscience…
“To all citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of contract and freedom of association…
“Voters in Democratic Croatia exercise their right to vote by secret ballot on the basis of general, equal and direct voting rights…”
It would take too long – and the facts are, anyway, well enough known – to demonstrate how all these promises were broken. But briefly the facts can be enumerated.
The facts: how promises were broken
First, private ownership and private business were not respected. The confiscation of property quickly proceeded partly through outright seizure of city flats, but more systematically by application of the 24 April “Decision of the Presidency of ZAVNOH about the Protection of the National Honour of Croats and Serbs in Croatia” (Odluka predsjedništva ZAVNOH-a o zaštiti nacionalne časti Hrvata i Srba u Hrvatskoj), which set up special courts, applying a very wide definition of collaboration with the enemy, as a device quickly to seize businesses and property.
Second, there was no respect for freedom of conscience or the right to worship. Priests were killed or imprisoned. The Church was subject to marginalisation, confiscation, repression and infiltration. A bitter ideological war against Christianity was fought in the classrooms and among the country’s youth.
Third, any exercise of the right to free speech could quickly result in imprisonment. The Party censored and soon alone controlled the newspapers. Public gatherings without Party approval – except initially pilgrimages – were rendered impossible.
No sincere attempt to install democracy
Fourth, there was no sincere attempt to install democracy. The creation of a one-party state was achieved by splitting and intimidating the HSS, the only important alternative to the Communists, and then creating the conditions in which it was unable to campaign. Indeed, the Communist Party of Croatia – under its various names, finally called the Stranka demokratskih promjena, Socijaldemokratska partija (Party of Democratic Changes, Social Democratic Party – the SDP) only accepted the possibility of multi-Party elections when it had no alternative, and while it still hoped by manipulating the voting arrangements to win them – which in 1990 proved its final miscalculation.
An authoritative list has been published of those who were executed in Zagreb in 1945 and 1946. There are 1555 names on it. Some are well-known, a few notorious, but most of the victims are forgotten. Some categorisations are revealing of the Party’s intentions. 60 were executed before any sentence was passed, which illustrates the new rulers’ haste and uninterest in justice. 35 were priests, nuns and other religious functionaries. Religion was to be singled out for persecution. 94 of those sentenced to death were women. Many other women endured long sentences under barbaric conditions in Požega women’s prison and elsewhere. Thus, did Communism liberate women.
Probably the most active judge of the military court of Zagreb, which sentenced so many to death, was Captain Vlado Ranogajec. He is honoured for his contribution to sport with his own street in Zagreb. More appropriately, perhaps, he should be remembered for sentencing, on 16 October 1944, a sixteen-year-old girl to be shot as a spy. But, then, forgetting the truth and propagating lies is what the insistence on the myth of Liberation by the Communist Party entails.
Author: Robin Harris, the President of COK and author of Croatia: A History – From Revolution to Independence.
